Becoming agile

Fostnope – A new blog is born

I’ve been toying with the idea of having an agile-only blog for a while. My regular readers know that I write on a wide array of subjects: from agile to zombies, from birth to death, and everything in between. All posts, however, in Hebrew.

The conflict is between Ilan the professional agile practitioner, and Ilan the person. So I’ve decided to try to separate the two, and see how it goes.

In this blog I will post on agile issues – occasionally I will still translate the odd post to Hebrew in my ‘general purpose’ blog and from time to time I will translate to English some of my older agile posts to here.

But first things first. Right – the name. What the heck is Fostnope?

Well, it is the essence of becoming an agile teammate: It is an acronym of Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing. We are finding ourselves in these stages all the time.

When we enter a new group, or when there are changes to our group – dramatic changes or otherwise – we return to Forming. We learn each other; we try not to steps on each other’s toes; we learn the turf.

After a while, we start to test the boundaries. We want to challenge ourselves and the others. We don’t want to be polite all the time – we do want to rock the boat. A storm is imminent – and that is a good thing.

Because when the storm subsides, we begin the real learning of one another. We develop norms according to which we behave in this group. Change the fabric, and you’re forming again. Maintain group stability, and you allow the members to develop conjointly.

If we are lucky, we get to be in a group – team I should say now, long enough to automatically behave within our norms. Rather than developing norms – they evolve naturally, without facilitation or artificial interferences – or almost without.

At any moment we may act in multiple groups and teams – as we always do. It is a good practice to observe, from time to time where am I, and where we are?

Are we forming? How long have we been doing this? Maybe it is time to provoke a storm?

Are we storming? Have we reached rock bottom yet? What’s stopping us from dealing with the core and painful issues?

Are we norming? Is it normal? How long will it take us to be there (hmmm, a long, long while, actually)

Are we changing? Do accept that we are forming again. Or storming. Or lucky enough to be norming.

So, happy fostnoping. I hope you will enjoy this blog J